1. I was a mime in high school (picture, below). No, not every day. The Clarkston High School drama club had a children's theater troupe and a mime troupe; every December we put on shows at the seven elementary schools in our district. On show days it was not unusual to see me in full mime makeup driving my mom's Saturn sedan full of mimes silently headbanging, lip-syncing, and overall rocking out to AC/DC and Def Leppard. Because mimes have impeccable taste in classic rock (or at least we did!).
2. For the past few years my husband and I have celebrated New Years Eve by watching Die Hard. We start the movie at 9:57 pm so that Hans Gruber drops at midnight to welcome in the new year. Yippee-ki-yay!
3. I am an avid cross-stitcher. I usually listen to podcasts and audiobooks while I stitch. The cross stitch project I am most proud of is a replica of the first world map from Super Mario Bros. 3 that took me years to finish. I also make cross stitch portraits of friends and family, including one of my husband and me camping in the Adirondacks. I've stalled out on stitching the map of Hyrule from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but I'm going to finish it someday!
4. My research is interdisciplinary and unites the fields of early American health humanities, disability studies, and narrative medicine. In part my research in the health humanities started after I read the diary of James Boswell (1740-1795) in grad school. I couldn't get over the way he wrote about his experiences with venereal disease. I remember thinking surely no one talks about their own body this way, right?! Turns out, people talk about their bodies in all kinds of fascinating ways! It's clear to me now that the stories we tell about our bodies are powerful. They help us make meaning from our health experiences and communicate not only to our friends and family, but also to our doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.
5. My ninth-great-grandfather, Samuel Wardwell (1643-1692), was executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. My Grandma Judy is big on genealogy and discovered that we are descendents of not one but two convicted witches. The other is Mercy Disbrow (1638-1718) of Connecticut who was found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced to death in 1692. Fortunately, she was pardoned in May 1693 (or else you probably wouldn't know me at all). Two of their descendants, Elenor Disbrow and Wardwell Chase, married in Attica, NY in 1847, uniting the witchy lines in my family tree.
6. My first real teaching experience was in prison. I co-taught a class on pop-culture in literature for the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project in 2011 as a summer gig after my first year of graduate school. My co-teacher and I drove an hour and a half twice a week from Auburn University to Elmore Correctional Facility, a medium-security state prison for men. On the first day of class the facility was locked down for a drug sweep; I got to pet a drug-sniffing dog (a very good boy…after he cleared me, obviously) but never got to meet my students. That unusual start aside, the rest of the experience was fantastic. I highly recommend teaching in prison education programs if you ever have the chance. The students were dedicated, polite, and eager to learn.
7. Despite being an English professor today, I was actually a history major in undergrad. My junior year I took an early American literature class with one of my favorite professors, Dr. Jennifer Dawson, and I was hooked! Early American literature is incredibly strange. A few highlights: allegations of witchcraft, more panthers than you'd expect, self-cannibalizing sleep walkers, murderous ventriloquists, and wealthy heiresses dressing in drag. It's wild. I ended up doing an independent study on early American captivity narratives and took an extra semester to wrap up my English major before heading to grad school.
8. My favorite author is Terry Pratchett. While I haven't read all of his books yet, I revisit the discworld regularly. My first tattoo, a hare, was inspired by his book I Shall Wear Midnight. I appreciate his witch books because they focus on the pure magic of doing the work: showing up for your community every day, doing unglamorous but necessary tasks, caring for each other. Magic may be accomplished by waving a wand in the Discworld, but to Pratchett's witches the best way to use magic is not to use it. Instead, they focus on the practical magic achieved by noticing the things that need doing and seeing that they get done well. I try to bring that ethos to my life and work every day.
9. I drove the zoo train at the Columbian Park Zoo in Lafayette, Indiana as a summer job in grad school back in 2016. I worked in the gift shop and had the pleasure of driving the train around the park (at about 4 miles per hour). Fun fact: In the 1950s, a chimpanzee named Buddy lived at the Zoo and drove the train. No for real, he did. At some point they realized chimpanzees probably shouldn't drive heavy machinery, so people like me got the job instead…
10. I love the mountains. My favorite place in the world is in my kayak, on a lake, in the mountains. I even got married in my kayak on Lake Eaton because my husband and I wanted to wed in the place we are happiest (picture, below). Some people thought we were crazy, but our small wedding on the water was perfect for us. I've kayaked in the Tetons, hiked in Zion National Park, and gone spelunking in Idaho (picture, below), among many other adventures. Now we kayak camp in the Adirondacks, carrying all of our gear in our boats, as often as we can while dreaming of owning a cabin in the mountains someday.

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